Empress Dowager Cixi Corrupt

Although there may not be an extremely extensive amount of knowledge about the Empress Dowager Cixi, she is often considered one of the most powerful women in history. She ruled for almost fifty years, maintaining and expanding her own power. During her ‘behind the curtain’ reign, she made all decisions and always had the final say. Though she was very sharp and understood and executed politics well, she was (what some might consider today) corrupt. She was insistent on keeping her power in the Qing dynasty, to the point of (being suspected of) killing others. Though this seems despotic, recent reports say that she was just like any other ruler, and was blamed for events that would also have occurred under any other’s rule. Perhaps the saying

As stated previously, she was the first to produce a male heir to the Emperor. In 1861, the Xianfeng Emperor died. Cixi’s son (who would become the Tongzhi Emperor) was only five years old. Under these strange circumstances, the Empress Dowager Ci’an (who was the Empress Consort before the Xianfeng emperor’s death) and Cixi were named co-regents. Ci’an’s “rank gave her a traditional right to authority” but since Cixi was the heir’s birthmother, she was given “precedence over the eight seasoned regents…[of] the Board of Regents that Xianfeng created on his deathbed.” On November 1, 1862 Cixi, with the help of Prince Gong (Kung) and his brother Prince Chun (Ch’un), “stripped the regents of all their offices, blamed them for the recent troubles of China and arrested them” : a successful coup. This was known as the Xinyou Palace Coup. Although the Empress Dowager Ci’an had precedence traditionally, she did not like to involve herself in politics. This left much room for Cixi to thrive, especially because, during this time, “no one saw anything more in the twenty-six year old mother of the T’ung-chih [Tongzhi] Emperor than a pleasant, quite pretty, quite bright

Many foreign powers ravaged China in search of wealth, brutally destroying land and violently fighting people. After much of the devastation, the Dynasty was ‘forced’ to acquiesce to the foreign powers (-only after they assured Cixi that her position and power would be held in place). The results of these was called the Boxer Protocol – which would later be considered one of the “Unequal Treaties.” Among the stipulations of the Boxer Protocol, China would have to pay an enormous amount of money, for indemnity, to about 14 countries (in different proportions). Furthermore, foreign powers were given the right to seize and inhabit certain places in China. Moreover, they had to formally apologize to the foreign powers. These apologies were especially painful to the Chinese, who believed that they were the ones who held utmost power – and might have even considered themselves divine. This was a blow to their ego and their reputation. They also had to suspend violence against foreigners (and those who did not would be punished). Empress Cixi began some of the other reformations after the Protocol, including the elimination of examinations. “Ironically, Cixi sponsored the implementation of a reform program more radical than the one proposed by the reformers she had beheaded in 1898” (including the Reforms created by her arrested nephew). She had so much power, that no one disputed